Psychological state verb + みる auxiliary?

Question

Two "textbook" sentences + attached translations:

悔やんでみたところで始まらない。No matter how much you regret it, it won't change a thing.

「私は」彼が言ったことを何度も反芻してみた。 I thought over his remark again and again.

So far I know of two ways みる auxiliary is used - to signal an attempt to do something to see what happens, or to see something in the literal sense. This here seems more as if it were a signal to the agent's resignation to doing something. Is that how one should treat psychological state verb + みる? How would one contrast the 2 above to these 2 below:

悔やんだところで始まらない。

彼が言ったことを何度も反芻した。

Do the (immediately) above 2 sentences sound "right" to a native/fluent ear?

Answer 1

In general, I think it safe to say that the more volitionality the meaning of the main verb includes, the better it goes with the auxiliary verb 「みる」.

In other words, the main verb's compatibility with 「みる」 depends on how much active effort is needed to perform the action described by the main verb.

To use the main verbs in your examples for comparison, 「[反芻]{はんすう}する = to ruminate, to think over」 is at least a slightly more "volitional" action than 「[悔]{く}やむ = to regret」.

Though it is true that we say both 「悔やんでみる」 and 「反芻してみる」, the latter sounds a little more fitting as far as collocation.

For the reason above, the sentence:

「[彼]{かれ}が[言]{い}ったことを[何度]{なんど}も反芻した。」

, while grammatical, does not sound as natural as the sentence:

「悔やんだところで[始]{はじ}まらない。」

That is because it is slightly more natural to say 「反芻してみた」 than 「反芻した」.